


Expose

by deathwailart



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Body Horror, Disturbing Themes, Female Character of Color, Gen, Renegade Commander Shepard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-05
Updated: 2014-08-05
Packaged: 2018-02-11 22:36:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2085753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's just one loose wire.  But people shouldn't have those.  Follows on from <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1974867">Experiment</a></p>
<p>Written for the 30 day drabble challenge: expose</p>
            </blockquote>





	Expose

It's mocking her.  
  
A normal person would probably freak out. A normal person would pace and panic and either get themselves to the medbay or call for someone to come up but when she sits down at her desk to take off her armour (she needs it close, she needs the security of her weapons and armour by her side at all times after what happened to her, she can't sleep without something to hand) and sees it she just sort of sits there. The gauntlet needs to be repaired from a shot that ripped through her shields as she took aim and she slapped medigel on at the time because she had to line up, fire a shot right into the skull of the trooper ( _her head came apart like a melon_ , it's always stuck with her, always) that hit her. Then it was slogging through the base, picking up whatever salvage there was, whatever they were there to do; no one could really fault her for being distracted. Suicide mission. Brought back from the dead.  
  
Circuitry poking out of her arm.  
  
Or something close to circuitry, she's not an expert on these things as much as she stares at the fractal scars that map the restored landscape of her body. Inch by inch she stares and presses down to feel the new joints. She could ask for a scan. She could just go and ask Miranda exactly what happened but she stares, transfixed. Still in her armour from the waist down with her arm at an angle on the desk in front of her, bathed in the soft blue glow of the fish tank. Moments like this and her body doesn't feel like it's hers, it feels like she's looking at someone else's arm, like she's in a biology lab somewhere. That just makes her think of Mordin though, Mordin muttering notes as he sorts out the flesh from the not-flesh and she wonders just how much of the substantial part is actually metal, how much of a freak she might be. There can't have been much left for them to work with after all.  
  
She wonders, tracing the edges of the injury with a finger, pain skittering up her arm and down her metal spine, what would happen if she tugged on it. If she held the little wire between her thumb and forefinger and _pulled_. Would it be like an old jumper with a loose thread? Pull, pull, pull until she unravels, until she yanks everything wrong and foreign and unnatural out of her body. She's had the standard issue modding done but she's not like a biotic, she's never had something not her inside her body and under her skin. She can't leave it really because she doesn't know what it'll do but equally she can't hop in the elevator down two floors to where Miranda's office and the medbay are conveniently close to one another. They'd draft in Tali and Tali might see something too like a geth if a geth had skin, maybe Mordin too and they could all stand quietly and trade remarks as Cassandra spectates on proceedings.  
  
In the end though she presses and watches as her fore and middle fingers on the hand that the arm with the wire sticking out is connected to. She pushes it back in with one finger. Slaps on more medigel. Removes her armour, showers, checks her messages and curls up in bed in the dark, in the silence.  
  
There's a red light under the slick sheen of the medigel that hasn't quite matched the surrounding skin, maybe real, maybe imaginary.  
  
It's still mocking her.


End file.
